ennui
by terabient
Summary: On a rainy day in Rouen, two people watch the sky and dream of greater things. Pre-SCII.


* * *

**ennui

* * *

**

The girl sits under the remains of an abandoned shack and watches the rain pour down. The shelter keeps the worst of the wet away, but in a downpour like this nothing truly stays dry, and chill water laps around her feet and dampens her worn dress and her flesh slowly goes numb.

In the streets people run past, their heads bowed under the torrential rainfall, voices muffled as they curse the skies or the gods or nothing at all. None notice the dark-eyed girl crouching amid the rotting slats. Mud splashes on her dun-colored dress and scabbed, pale flesh as they rush by.

She is used to this. She _expects_ this. The cold and the damp and the rot seep into the soul as surely as they seep into the wooden boards over her head, eating away at both until they collapse from the stress of it all. She does not fault the people for their blindness, though she cannot forgive their meekness, either.

Absently, she flexes her hands. The cold flesh prickles painfully as her blood sullenly begins to flow again.

The girl looks to the weeping grey sky, and thinks: _There must be something greater than this._

* * *

The man stands in the center of a grand ballroom, the heat from a hundred lights and a hundred people beating down on him. The sound of countless conversations rises to the ceiling and becomes a dull, shapeless roar, insulating the revelers as snugly as the walls guarding against the storm outside.

He lifts a wine glass to his lips. The cool liquid bubbles and pops over his tongue. The lady at his side protests. _You drink too much, _she says, her breathy voice barely audible over the wordless din surrounding them.

The man does not disagree. He always drinks too much at these parties; drinks until his vision blurs at the edges, drinks until he can't separate the buzz in his head from the buzz of useless conversation, drinks until his eyes are as glazed and mind as dull as those around him. He could not function otherwise.

He feels the woman's hand slip under his sleeve, her fingers caressing his flesh suggestively. He knows what she wants, might even find it exciting - if he could remember her name for more than a moment, if her hand was not as soft and unremarkable as bread dough.

Outside, the rain continues to fall, the wind tossing sheets of water against the massive windows. The man looks to the weeping grey sky, and thinks: _There must be something greater than this._

* * *

The girl finds she is afraid to touch the man, this person she has saved, this man whose life she owns. The soldiers she had misled would have told her she has good reason to be afraid. The man is armed, and he is wanted for murder. But such things are not what she fears. She is afraid this man cannot be real, for she has never seen anyone like him before. She is afraid he will dissapate, like a dream, should she reach out for him.

The man cannot stop looking at the girl, at this child who has saved him. Her eyes are as smooth as a garden pond and deeper than the ocean; he could spend his life searching those eyes, and never find what lay hidden in their depths.

He reaches out and takes her hands in his. The girl gasps at the sudden contact. His hands are supple and smooth, the sort of hands that have never been broken by hard labor; but they are strong and firm around her wrists, with none of the weak, pudgy softness she associates with the nobility. She wonders what kind of place might craft such hands, finds she cannot imagine such a thing.

"Your name," the man says. The girl wears only rags and filth and her skin hangs sadly from her bones; but for all that she is vital and shining, not beaten down and worn to nothing like the other peasants he has seen. He finds he wants to be direct with her in a way he has never been before: she is not one whose time he dares to waste.

"Amy," the girl replies. She likes the way he speaks, the careful, deliberate way he shapes his words. "And you?"

"Raphael." And because he cannot fathom the depths of her dark eyes, he asks: "Why?"

_I did it to spite them,_ is what she means to say. But she is afraid that he will find her answer disappointing; that his eyes, as blue and bright as the summer sky, will dim and turn away from her, and already she cannot bear to lose him, this carefully-crafted jewel that has dropped into her lap.

So instead she says, "I wanted to help you."

The man is silent for a long time. He has never met someone who would offer aid without expecting payment in return, and he searches her features, suspecting there is something more; and perhaps there is, but he cannot read the smoothness of her face.

"Would you come with me, Amy?" His hands tighten around her wrists. He does not know what he will do if she rejects him, but already the thought is unbearable. He does not understand what makes this girl shine so brightly in this ruined slum but now that he has found her he will not let her go.

The girl looks at the supple hands wrapped around her own. His flesh is creamy and smooth, like milk, and the dirt caking her skin is starkly black against that whiteness. She does not understand what has caused him to fall so far, but now that the world has given her this gift she will not let him go.

"Yes."

The man sighs in relief, only now realizing he'd been holding his breath.

The girl feels her lips curve into a smile for the first time in ages.

"Amy," the man says, "I'll show you something greater than this."


End file.
